


lookin' sharp, lookin' for love

by thebeanunderthecorner



Series: ...and you get a songfic! [6]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Creepy, Dark Owl Records, F/F, Flirting, It's an interdimensional store, M/M, Music, Rundown - Freeform, Sharp Dressed Man - ZZ Top, Shopping, Songfic, Sort Of Fluff, Sort of Crossover, Trans Agent Stern (The Adventure Zone), Welcome to Night Vale References, a literal swarm of bees, background danbrey implied, ish
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:49:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29973486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebeanunderthecorner/pseuds/thebeanunderthecorner
Summary: Agent Joseph Stern can't stand not listening to music for at least some part of his day, so when he gets a boombox from the thrift store, he can't wait to play the one CD he has. Well, it's not the only CD he has, but it's his favorite. And everybody at Amnesty Lodge can tell.(Based on "Sharp Dressed Man" by ZZ Top)
Relationships: Barclay/Agent Stern (The Adventure Zone), Dani/Aubrey Little
Series: ...and you get a songfic! [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2053647
Kudos: 6





	1. clean shirt, new shoes

Joseph Stern laid out his clothes for the day, making sure nothing was forgotten, then turned on his CD player. Sure, it was old and a little beat up, but Jeanie's Thrift 'N Gift had it for five bucks, and in this town, CD and record players went fast, so he snatched it right up. Made sense, since it was hard to get any radio stations outside the few local ones, and Wi-Fi was virtually non-existent, making streaming services impossible to access with the shitty internet provided by the ethernet cable at the Lodge. It was barely enough to run his search browser with a couple tabs open. 

He hit play and there was a moment of dead air, then suddenly the heavy guitar of his favorite classic rock song came through the small, yet powerful, speakers of his should-be-defunct music player, and he grinned. He turned the volume dial all the way up and started getting dressed, singing along with ZZ Top as he buttoned up his shirt and tied his tie. 

"Yes, everyone's crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man," Joseph sang as he checked his reflection one last time before going down to breakfast. The song started up again for the fifth time as he made to leave, just barely remembering to turn the CD player off so he wouldn't waste electricity while he was gone. 

He got down to the common area of Amnesty Lodge to find it practically devoid of life, save for three people. Miss Little sat behind the reception desk while the wisp of a woman known as Moira played soft music at the piano. And behind the bar stood the most handsome man Joseph had ever met. 

"Good morning, Barclay," he said with a smile as he walked up to the bar. 

"Morning, Agent Stern," the tall chef replied, fidgeting with the coffee machine. 

Joseph headed to his favorite spot at the bar and saw his usual breakfast order already waiting for him, a copy of the day's newspaper folded up next to it. He hummed in surprise and sat down, ready to dig into the omelette on his plate. He pulled out the newspaper and started reading it as he ate, until a mug of coffee entered his peripheral vision. 

"Here's your coffee, Agent," Barclay said, placing it by his plate. "Just how you like it." 

Setting the newspaper down, Joseph took hold of the mug. "We'll see about that," he said, looking the other man in the eye daringly, nearly making Barclay choke. He took a sip and was pleasantly surprised. “Wow! It really is just the way I like it! How  _ do  _ you do it?” 

Barclay recovered and smiled. “Easy. You get the same thing every day. Well, the same coffee, at least. Breakfast gets switched up sometimes, but you’re pretty predictable, Agent.”

"Oh," Stern said, diving back into his newspaper. He finished up his breakfast and headed out to interview a few more townspeople. He had to be getting somewhere with his work any day now.


	2. silk suit, black tie

Barclay smiled fondly as he heard the faint sound of rock music coming from the other side of the Lodge. 

"If I can hear it all the way back here, he must be driving everyone else insane," he laughed before putting his croissants in the oven. 

It'd been more than a month since Agent Stern had started blasting his music in the mornings and it was driving a few of the residents of Amnesty Lodge a little bonkers. Not Dr Harris Bonkers, PhD, of course. Just regular bonkers. He seemed to have a bootleg CD of ZZ Top's "Sharp Dressed Man" that  _ only  _ contained "Sharp Dressed Man" since it was the only thing he played in the morning, and no one ever heard anything else from his room at any other point in time.

"Maybe he only has one CD," Aubrey hypothesized while on break one day. "What if he needs more music and just can't find any?" 

"Nonsense. This town's got two record stores that also sell CDs. Plus, the thrift stores all have media sections. And there's the audio section of the public library. Of course he has to have more than one, Aubrey!" Jake Coolice reasoned. 

"Yeah, but what if he doesn't know that?" Dani asked. 

"True. He does spend a lot of his time either interrogating people or writing stuff down," Aubrey responded. "Hey! We should get him some CDs! That way he won't be stuck listening to the same song over and over again!" 

The trio of friends looked at each other, nodded, and agreed to go to one of the record stores. 

"Hey, Barkley! We're taking the truck and going into town! Need anything?" Aubrey called into the kitchen before they left. 

"Not that I know of," he called back. Then he panicked. "Wait! Who's going to watch the front desk?" 

"Don't worry about it," Aubrey responded. Then the door chimed, signaling to Barclay that the three friends were gone. 

_ 'Great. I'm probably going to be stuck at the reception desk,'  _ Barclay thought, but when he walked out of the kitchen to check on things, Dr Harris Bonkers, Aubrey's rabbit, was sitting on the desk, nibbling at the sign around his neck that read "Be back soon!" 

"Great. Just great," the Sylph grumbled. While he sat begrudgingly at the reception desk, he made a note to himself to talk to Aubrey about finding a proper receptionist substitute, then drifted off into a daydream about a certain sharp dressed man. 


	3. runnin' just as fast as they can

Meanwhile, Aubrey, Dani, and Jake drove into Kepler on a mission. 

"Ooh! Dark Owl Records! That one seems cool!" Aubrey said, pulling Barclay's truck into a small parking lot right off the road. The three of them got out and Jake turned to Aubrey, looking a little concerned. 

"Have you ever been here before?" he asked. 

"No," Aubrey replied. "But it seems really cool, and I’m all for that!”

“Oooo...kay… So, just a heads up,” Dani said. “It’s gonna be weird in there, but they do have cool shit.”

And then they were in front of the record store.

Dark Owl Records looked like a normal storefront from the outside, but as soon as they stepped inside, it felt like they had been transported to another point in space and time. The interior of the store was lit entirely by strings of neon purple lights. Some that had shaped lights, some that looked just like Candlenights lights, and some that no one could really be sure were lights at all. On the left side sat a beat up looking counter with a disused-looking cash register on its left side, sitting atop a glass case that held what looked like a bird’s nest and a few jars labeled with unintelligible words. Across from the counter were a few rows labeled “R E C ⬛ R D S, " the ‘O’ obscured by a weird stain. Amongst the first row of records sat a beehive that looked like it was straight from nature, tree limb still attached, a few bees wandering about. 

Aubrey looked to Dani and Jake for help, but they acted like it was all normal and were wandering away to browse, so she went back to looking around.

The walls, covered in various prints and posters, were what looked to be a dingy grey, but the lighting made it impossible to really tell. At the end of the aisle formed by the checkout counter and the first row of records sat a display of CDs, or at least it was marked as “Compact Disks.” Aubrey wasn’t quite sure what she would find if she walked up to it based on the couple of rows of records and not-records she’d seen so far. She craned her neck to look around the corner, almost afraid of what she’d see, but it was just more rows, with a large bin of cassette tapes that were, thankfully, actual cassettes.

“Welcome to Dark Owl Records. My name’s Michelle, and this is my store. How may I help you?” a bleary voice asked, nearly making Aubrey jump.

She turned and saw a tired- or possibly bored- looking girl, teenaged at least, with a nametag on her shirt and a crown of bees on her head.

“Um, hi… Michelle… My friends and I are looking for a few good CDs for an… acquaintance of ours. He’s into, well, we’ve only ever heard him play ZZ Top, so if you know of anything like that- wait. Why are there bees on your head?”

“Oh, this is part of the new hit band I just discovered. It’s called A Literal Swarm of Bees. Their work is in the first row of records right here. I don’t get why more people don’t like their stuff. Some people are just the worst music snobs! Has your acquaintance brought up music preferences to you before?” 

“Uh, no. But he literally only plays one song, over and over again, and we’re getting a bit annoyed. He blasts it at, like, eight in the morning! We kind of need it to stop. My rabbit, Dr Harris Bonkers, PhD, can’t get his beauty sleep if he continues on like this,” Aubrey explained. Michelle rolled her eyes.

“Okay, so we have a couple from little-known artists, like this one of just glass being chewed for an hour, or some Sufjan Stevens, Phillip Glass, Daughtry, or Lead Zeppelin. That last one isn’t actually the famous classic rock band, but a metal cover band of the famous one.” She held up a couple CDs she’d picked up, or maybe pulled out of a pocket somewhere. Aubrey didn’t know, and in a place like this, she didn’t want to know.

“Um, okay. I think he likes classic rock, possibly, so maybe that cover band one, and, uh, this one,” Aubrey said, reaching into a basket and pulling out a case that read ‘Construction Basics for Dummies.’ She looked at it real hard, then went to put it back down. “Maybe not this one.”

“Oh, no! That one’s got a good track on it! You just have to listen really hard for the beats and notes and stuff. He might like it!” Michelle countered. 

“Hey, Dani! Jake! I think we’ve got something here!” Aubrey shouted, unsure of where her friends went.

Dani popped up two aisles away, hands full of obscure records. Jake rounded the corner real fast and almost ran into Michelle.

“Sorry, Michelle,” he said quickly.

“No worries, Jake. Enjoy that last group I recommended?” Michelle asked. She seemed to know at least Jake, so Aubrey wondered if this girl knew the whole town at this point.

“Yeah! The pile of ghosts is still in its jar, but their whispers are very soothing. Great for helping me sleep. Thanks!”

“Say, Michelle,” Aubrey said, trying to sound nonchalant. “Would you happen to know a scary-looking FBI agent, by any chance? Oh, about 5’11” in a nice suit and stiffly done hair? Comes into town every day to ask people questions?”

“Sure I do. He came in the other day and bought a The Police album, which I found ironic, you know, since he’s FBI,” Michelle replied, smiling a little at her joke. “Paid in real money, which was the first time I’ve handled actual cash in a good while. Seemed nice enough.”

“Okay! So he does have more than one CD!” Dani exclaimed,having returned to the register, where Aubrey stood holding the two CDs she’d picked out. “I’m ready to check out, Michelle,” she said. “Aubrey doesn’t know how it works here so I’ll go first.”

Michelle took the armful of records and started scanning them with her cell phone, which Aubrey was pretty sure was just on the camera feature, and setting them into a cardboard box. “That’ll be three hairs, a wish, and your darkest desire.”

Dani nodded, then ran her hands through her hair, catching a few shed strands and handing them over to the cashier, who handed her a pen and a piece of paper. The Sylph took a few seconds to think and then she started writing. She folded up the paper and handed it back to Michelle, grabbing her box from the counter and stepping aside. Aubrey put the two albums on the counter and Michelle scanned them, once again making Aubrey think she hadn’t actually done anything. The proprietor of this odd and, frankly, creepy shop looked up at her and thought a second before giving her the price of her objects.

“One of the sewn-on buttons from your vest and the worst thing someone did to you in the fourth grade.”

Looking down at her vest, noticing that one of the buttons, which she never actually buttoned up, was loose, Aubrey picked at the thread until the button fell into her hand. She put it on the counter and was handed a slip of paper and a pen, similar to what Dani had been given, but slightly different. Different enough to make Aubrey’s head hurt, but not too different as to interfere with her writing. She wrote on the paper a memory of when she’d been bullied for being Puerto Rican during recess and gave the paper and pen to Michelle. She grabbed the bag containing her purchase and walked out of the store with her friends.

As they passed over the threshold to the street, Aubrey felt a relief wash over her, and the pain of being bullied was gone. Her vest didn’t obviously look like it was missing a button, but she knew it was.

“Okay that was weird, right? Like, we’ve fought monsters, you two aren’t from here, and I have magic, but this was real weird,” she said, confused. Dani and Jake shrugged.

“That’s just Kepler, I guess. It’s how she runs her business,” Jake said. “She gives bomb music suggestions though. And her vibe is really chill.”

"Now we need to find a way to give these to Agent Stern. I don't wanna go up and say 'here!' because that might be rude, so…"

"How about we wrap them up and leave 'em outside his door?" Dani suggested. "That way it's a surprise." 

"Great idea! I knew there was a reason I liked you," Aubrey joked, the words nearly making Dani choke. No one noticed, though. 

The trio got back in the truck and headed back to Amnesty Lodge, unaware of the FBI agent trailing just a few steps behind them. 


End file.
